1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic memory cells and switches. More particularly, the present invention involves electrically bistable devices that utilize non-volatile memory elements including at least conducting nanofibers that could be doped with metal nanoparticles.
2. Description of Related Art
The publications and other reference materials referred to herein to describe the background of the invention and to provide additional details regarding its practice are hereby incorporated by reference. For convenience, the reference materials are numerically referenced and identified in the appended bibliography.
In recent years, polymer and organic materials have drawn enormous attention in the application of electronic devices, such as light emitting diodes [1], photovoltaic cells [2], transistors [3] and non-volatile memory devices [4, 5]. Among these materials, polyaniline (PANI) is a conducting conjugated polymer, which has a large potential in electronic and chemical applications. The conductivity of PANI can be tuned by reversible acid/base doping/de-doping chemistry processes [6]. Recently, PANI has been made into one-dimensional nanostructures, such as nanowires, nanorods and nanofibers. The nanoscale network structure of PANI offers high interfacial area that is useful for providing chemical sensors with high selectivity and fast response time [7, 8]. However, these applications are still being explored and there is lack of useful polyaniline electronic devices.